I Am Panopticon

by Matt Frost

At 23:05 I pour myself another cup of coffee and watch as the trembling man collapses and begins to die. What’s left of his clothes are torn and soiled by overuse, and his skin is grey and dotted with weeping sores. He is a Low City transient. He is not my concern.

He falls backward and hits the wall before landing face-up on a pile of garbage. He lays there a moment, limbs twitching and jerking, then slides part way down the pile. A thin rope of saliva clings between the corner of his mouth and the grey stubble that covers his chin. The trembling slows. In the corner of the screen, I see a bodega with a red and blue neon sign of a coiled Lóng Dragon in the window. The dragon is smoking a cigarette. As the lights on the sign shift the dragon raises the cigarette, then lowers it and blows out smoke from its nostrils. Then it repeats. I tap some powdered milk into my cup and swirl it around as the transient vomits and begins to choke on it. This is known as aspirating. Many transients die like this.

At 23:09 he is dead. His glassy eyes are turned upward toward the camera, reflecting the streetlamp above in two tiny droplets of light. I consider notifying the authorities and giving them his body’s coordinates, but the paperwork is already piling up and they wouldn’t collect him tonight anyway. The people in the bodega will find him, I think. They will take care of it. If they don’t, at least the street cleaners will. The dragon raises its cigarette, and I switch the feed. The next camera shows two gentlemen getting acquainted with each other’s bodies in a High City alleyway. Their suits are clean and white, and they seem to be enjoying themselves. It feels inappropriate to watch, but perhaps that’s what they want.

I switch the feed anyway.

If you asked, I would say that I believe in love. I have a wife and two beautiful daughters, and I love them all very much. The girls are ten and twelve; my wife and I are divorced. She left me after I was arrested for trafficking drugs on the waterfront. We both knew it was coming long before that, though; it just seemed like the right time. I did not hate her for leaving. I still don’t. I would have done the same.

The court awarded her custody—I don’t blame them—so I do not get to see my daughters often. I spend most of my time at work, and send them all the money I can so they can live comfortably. I always put a note in the envelope that says Love, Papá. I do not know if their mother gives the notes to them.

At 23:30 the camera feeds shows me six gang members beating another man by the docks, two Low City bacchanalians passed out in the doorstep of a housing complex with nine more revelers trashing a car nearby, four teenagers playing on the street with a makeshift ball made of cloth and twine. I send the first two feeds through to Upper Management and mark them for Further Review and Possible Action. The teenagers continue to pass the ball across the screen, running and laughing silently as I catch up on all the necessary forms I need to submit. I always try to be precise when I fill them out. My father always said that a job well done is the best thing a man can own. If you asked, I’d say I agree.

I finish typing the reports. I grab myself another cup of coffee, send up the forms and switch the feed.

At 00:00 my shift ends. I finish my last form and remove my ID from the terminal. My replacement—Roberto, I think, or maybe his name is Rodrigo—is waiting outside the door as I exit. We say hello and he asks me how my day was. Oh, I say. The Usual. I make a quick stop at the bathroom, and then take the elevator down to the lobby. I stand and wait until the front door is open, then I say goodnight to my commanding officer and exit the building. The company’s logo shines brilliant and white up on the roof of the building, so pure and bright that you can see it for miles. If you ever get lost in the city—especially in the Low City—the company’s sign is a good landmark to use; it draws your eye up to it like a beacon. In the High City, the buildings are much taller, and the company building stays hidden most of the time, appearing only in snatches like the sun coming through a window. I still rely on it as much as I can, though. I like to see the logo. It makes me feel safe.

It takes me, on average, one hour and twenty-two minutes to walk home. It would be faster to take the train, but I prefer to walk. After spending time in prison, you learn to appreciate the freedom to walk wherever you want. You appreciate being able to look at things that are far away. You appreciate so many things.

I walk, and I listen, and I watch.

I look at the lights, and the buildings, and the people, but more than anything else I look at the cameras. When I walk I try to count them all, but I always lose count. They are everywhere. The company has them in every streetlamp, but there are many more besides those. Some are visible; most are not. I heard someone say once that there are over 250,000 cameras in operation throughout the city. I think that is a conservative estimate.

The brain takes thirteen milliseconds to register what you see. Your body’s response time is slower, but not by much. If you don’t see anything noteworthy, you can cycle through an average of nine feeds in a minute; my personal best is fifteen. You can type up a report in under a minute, if you are quick. I take longer, but only because I care. Even with my slower pace, I can watch a lot of feeds in eight hours. There are over three thousand Curators employed by the company, including me. At any given moment, there are well over seven hundred people watching the feeds. I’ve done the math.

There are cameras everywhere.

I walk home under their watchful eyes, and outside my building I turn and wave to the nearest street lamp. I never know if anyone sees it, but I like to think someone does. It’s my way of saying goodnight. I go upstairs and heat up some rice and beans on the hotplate, and then I go to bed. As I fall asleep, I listen to my neighbor—Mr. Wan, a nice old Chinese man—talk to his wife. She’s been dead for years, but he still talks to her out of habit. I think it keeps him going. I like listening to him talk to her; I don’t speak much Cantonese, but I like the way it sounds. After a while, he stops talking and turns on his radio, and tunes it to something classical. Mozart, maybe. Or Bach. I never had much of an ear for music.

At 08:00 I get up and get dressed. I eat some breakfast and listen to Mr. Wan talk to his wife. I do the dishes and take out the trash. As I come back up, Mr. Wan is leaving his apartment. I smile at him as I walk past, and he smiles back at me. I go inside and finish the rest of my chores. At 12:00 I leave the apartment and go for a walk. The streets are much busier in the daytime: there are vendor carts and children playing, there are families getting water and food. There are buskers and panhandlers. I watch them all as I walk.

At 16:00 I insert my ID into the terminal and begin to Curate. The day is uneventful: two Muggings, three Accidental Injuries, six Domestic Disputes that spilled out into the street. Couples walking, holding hands. Children playing Piko. Old men playing Mahjongg. I watch them all, through a thousand unseen eyes.

My father hated the cameras. He said it made him want to keep secrets, to hide things away. I asked him if he had anything to hide. He said no, but that’s not the Point Of It All. I asked him what the Point Of It All was, but he never gave me the answer. I don’t know if he knew what it was. I just think he didn’t like being watched. He and my mother would always go into the bedroom and close the door when they needed to discuss anything serious; I used to spy on them, first out of curiosity, and then out of habit. Maybe I wanted to see if I could discover any of his secrets. Maybe I just wanted to be included. I don’t know. I only got caught spying once; I sneezed, he beat me. I still spied on them after that, but I was more careful. They talked about money, mostly. Sometimes it was about me. Sometimes it was about work. My father didn’t have any real secrets.

My father was a company man who worked with steel, and that’s what I was taught to be. But times got tight, and there were no more steel jobs left, so I got work as a street cleaner. When they automated the cleaning, I worked as a builder. When we got laid off, I found a job unloading crates down at the docks. I did not know the crates were full of heroin. I do now. We were tried as a group—the workers and the foreman—and during the trial, the judge called us a menace to society. Many of the workers’ families were there. Mine weren’t. The dock workers all got ten years in the correctional facility; the foreman was sent to a labor camp for the rest of his life. I remember watching as the foreman cried. I felt sorry for him. Then I got divorced and went to prison.

In prison, the cells are eight by twelve, and everything is white. Each cell contains a pull-out bed and a toilet, a screen and a camera. The camera watches you. The screen lets you watch others. There is not much to do in the cells. You eat the government-rationed nutriblocks that are dispensed through the door twice a day, and you drink the water that comes from the dispenser at the top of the toilet. At first, you are alone; each cell is isolated and remote. You do not hear any voices. You do not see any people. After a while, you get bored. A little while longer, and you get desperate. Some people go crazy. I didn’t. I looked at the screen instead. The screen is set into the wall, and has a white button underneath that says Report. The screen itself is hooked up to the company’s camera feeds. The company takes time off your sentence if you correctly report a Criminal Activity. Once you report a few, the guards start to speak to you. They wear helmets that hide their faces, and use modulators that change their voices; still, it’s a relief to talk to another person. It makes you want more. If you report a few more, they switch off the modulators so you can hear their real voice. A few more, and they replace your nutriblocks with real food. Keep reporting, and you’re eventually allowed out of your cell for a bit. If an inmate shows talent for Curating the feeds, they’re offered a job when their sentence is done. They’re given a second chance.

I was given a second chance.

At 00:00 my shift ends and I say my usual goodbyes. I walk home on my usual route. As I walk, I count the cameras. I count up to 130 when a young man passes me from behind. He stops and turns to face me. I smile at him, but he doesn’t smile back. He seems uncertain. He gives me an odd look, and then asks if I know the time. 00:42, I say. Okay, he says. Thanks. He walks away quickly with his hand stuffed in his pocket.

I continue walking but only count another six cameras when I am interrupted by a scream from a nearby street. I look around to see if there is anyone else around, but I am alone. I hesitate, unsure of what to do. I hear the scream again. I hear a struggle; I hear what sounds like a gunshot. I hope it isn’t one. I round the corner and duck behind a pile of trash.

I crouch, and I hide, and I watch.

A young girl with dark red hair and a dark red dress is lying in a puddle of dark red water beneath a streetlamp. She has a hole in her chest. I think she’s dying. The young man who asked me the time is standing over her with a small gun in his hand. Oh my god, he says. He keeps saying it over and over again. Oh my god. He stands there for a moment, and then grabs her white purse splattered in dark red spots and runs past me into the street, and is gone.

I sit in shock. There’s nothing I could have done to stop this, I tell myself. If I had tried to stop him, I would be like her. I would be dead. There’s no way I could have known he would do this, I tell myself. He looked so young; he didn’t seem like he was a threat. Oh my god, I say. Oh my god. I get up and go over to her. Her eyes are wide open, reflecting the streetlight in two round pools of gold. I look up and wave frantically at the camera, hoping to get its attention. I don’t know if anyone’s watching.

I hope they are.

I stand there, watching the street lamp as it watches us. I wait for sirens. They don’t come. A lizard runs over the girl’s foot, and I expect her to twitch, to sit up, to shake it off. She doesn’t move. I ask myself if this is my fault; I don’t have an answer. I do not know what time it is when I finally leave.

I walk the rest of the way home, and count all the cameras I can see. I get up to three hundred, and then the tears are flowing too hard and I can’t keep track anymore.

At 04:00 I lie in bed and listen to Mr. Wan talk to his wife. Maybe it helps, I think. To talk to the dead. I try to talk to the girl, but I don’t even know her name. I’ve never been good at conversation anyway. Mr. Wan puts on his classical music—Bach or Mozart, I’m not sure which. I can’t help but listen. I can’t help but cry.

At 07:00 I get up and leave the house. I go to the spot where the girl died, but she isn’t there anymore. The blood is gone too, leaving behind a brown stain on the concrete. The street lamp remains.

I wander through the city, but I don’t look at anything; I just think and walk. When I check my watch, it’s 16:00 and I’m late for work. I run all the way there. The commanding officer is waiting for me. You’re late, he says. I know, I say. Why, he asks; I don’t have a good answer. Don’t let it happen again, he says.

At 16:45 I put my ID into the terminal and begin to Curate. I find it hard to keep my focus. I stare at the people through a thousand different eyes, and I keep wondering if any of them have hidden behind garbage piles in fear. If any of them have been assaulted beneath the watchful eyes of a street lamp. If anyone was there to help them. If anyone saw it at all. I send them all through to Upper Management, marked for Further Review and Possible Action.

My commanding officer stops by and asks me if I’m feeling all right. He tells me that I haven’t filed any reports for all the feeds I sent through. Oh, I say. You’re right. He smiles and asks me if I had a late night. Yes. Yes I did. He laughs. He tells me he didn’t think I was the type for that. The type for what, I ask. Never mind, he says. Just get the reports in.

As he turns to leave, I stop him and ask if any Curators sent a Homicide through to Upper Management last night. I tell him it would be in the area. I tell him it would be a young girl in a red dress. He gives me a strange look and says he’ll check.

At 21:00 he comes back and says that no one reported anything.

Oh, I say. All right then. He gives me another strange look as he leaves. He does not come back. I finish my shift.

At 00:00 I remove my ID and go outside. I stare at all the cameras. I don’t know if any of them stare back. I go to the spot again; it’s hard to find because the automated street cleaner must have come through while I was away. I stand there for a long time, and I stare at the spot where the blood had been, and I stare at the street lamp, and then I begin to walk. I head away from my apartment. I head away from Headquarters. I head into the Low City. I walk down a thousand different streets, under a canopy of a thousand different cameras. I walk for hours; the night sky slowly lightens from asphalt to concrete. At 06:33 I find the bodega with the smoking dragon in the window. Next to a streetlamp with a cracked cover I find a small alley, packed high with garbage. As I watch, a man comes out from the back door of the bodega with two black bags in his hands and tosses them onto the pile. He repeats this trip several times. He seems very tired. I stop him and ask him when the garbage was last collected. Three days ago, he says. Oh, I say. Okay then. I ask him if he found anything in the pile; he asks me if I’ve lost something. I tell him I don’t know. He gives me a strange look and goes back inside. I watch him go and then wander over to the streetlamp and stare at the pile for a moment.

Then I begin to dig.

I find the transient beneath several bags stuffed with empty bottles and old food. I look up at the lamp, and then go inside the Bodega and ask to use their phone. I contact the authorities and tell them that I’ve found a body, and yes I can give them the coordinates, and yes I can wait. I buy myself a cup of coffee and go outside to keep the transient company. All around us, I hear the sounds of the city waking up: vendors shouting, dogs barking, monks chanting, babies crying. A train rumbles along in the distance, and somewhere nearby a radio switches on and begins to play something classical. The light flickers dimly from red to blue to red as the dragon raises and lowers its cigarette, and I see, in the distance, the faint silver glow of the company’s logo, pierced through and stained with the gold of the rising sun.